News & Alerts

News & Alerts

A discussion on possible adaptations to the REACH Annexes to include nanomaterial considerations is being scheduled to take place at an upcoming meeting with the European Commission, Members States Competent Authorities and Stakeholders. The NIA will be present and the Association asks its Members to provide input and feedback on their views on...

The UK's HSE has released guidance on 'how to control occupational exposure to manufactured nanomaterials in the workplace'. Entitled Using nanomaterials at work: Including carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and other biopersistent high aspect ratio nanomaterials (HARNs), the document 'has been prepared in response to emerging evidence about the toxicity of...

The Danish EPA has published a report outlining 'technical information requirements for nanomaterials'. The document, entitled Information Requirements for Nanomaterials, contains proposals 'which may be used in legislative instruments concerning nanomaterials', such as the REACH Regulation

The Austrian Environment Agency (Umweltbundesamt Österreich) has launched a 2nd Stakeholder Consultation on the European Commission's Study for the Review of the List of Restricted Substances under RoHS 2 Directive (Draft 1st Interim Report)

The IUCLID 5 project has released an updated version of its Nanomaterials in IUCLID 5 user manual. This document provides guidance on how exactly companies can work with the database to fulfil their reporting obligations for nanomaterials to various multinational reporting schemes (such as for REACH)

In its newly published Evaluation Report 2012, the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) presents the main shortcomings that the agency has encountered in registration dossiers submitted by the first 2010 registration deadline

The US EPS intends to make SNURs for 14 substances 'whose reported chemical names include the term "carbon nanotube (CNT)" or "carbon nanofibers"'. Due to 'a lack of established nomenclature', however, the authority has provided the names of the chemicals subject to the rulings only in generic form

The NIA has responded to the US National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health's (NIOSH) request for information on nano-silver. Its main suggestion is for the agency 'to avoid redundancy' by taking into account 'all the results of the OECD'

A recently published briefing on nanomaterials in food has revealed that testing of 'two commercially available donuts' found 'titanium dioxide nanoparticles of 10nm or smaller'. The report, entitled Slipping Through the Cracks, also stated that only 1% of 2500 food-related companies responded to a survey it carried out on nanomaterials in food

Minutes from the 28th meeting of the Nanomaterials in Cosmetic Products Working Group (WG) have been released. They reveal that the European Commission (EC) has requested that the group provide criteria to 'identify nanomaterials of concern', and that the WG is now looking at carbon black as well as titanium dioxide and S79

Reponses to the nanotechnology-related elements of the EC's recent review of the REACH Regulation have been made by ECHA as well as various NGOs. Overall ECHA said that it agreed with the Commission's suggestions for improvements, whilst some NGOs felt that not enough was being done

The Canadian Department of the Environment has published a Significant New Activity Notice for potassium titanate under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. The nanoscale version of this substance has specific reporting guidelines assigned to it

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) has announced that it is running a consultation on a 'reflection paper on medicines delivered using nano-sized block copolymer micelles'. It has written the document in collaboration with the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (MHLW)

A consortium of German federal agencies has published Nanomaterials and REACH - Background Paper on the Position of German Competent Authorities. The report 'reflects the position of the...authorities' and 'is intended as a basis for preparing decision-making routes for political processes'

Ways to 'create eco-friendly designs with nanotechnology and use it to reduce health and environmental hazards by seeking methods to replace present applications' are actively being sought by engineers, according to a report. The briefing What is Green Nanotechnology? analyses a number of ecological challenges and describes how nanotechnology...

Oral arguments were made by the US National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) recently in its court-case against the nation's EPA. The case was brought to court by the NRDC in January 2012 over the Agency's registration of a nanosilver product

Two international standards have been published by ISO for the characterisation and measurement of titanium dioxide and calcium carbonate dry powders. The documents, respectively Nanotechnologies - Nanoscale titanium dioxide in powder form - Characteristics and measurement (ISO/TS 11937:2012) and Nanotechnologies - Nanoscale calcium carbonate in...